The Unhallowed History
The Unhallowed History is a book that was taken into possession by Wren during the third adventure of the Harlowe Traveling Adventure Brokerage, and subsequently divided among that group. It was discovered in the ruins of Skyveil Keep, in a laboratory guarded by rust monsters and a sinister psychic brain, presumably having been brought there by blackguard Fyodor the Fallen when he occupied and corrupted that ancient place, turning it into a citadel where operations of the Cult of Mammon could be carried out in secret. The book itself is written in Abyssal and contains the history of the rise and fall of a number of significant religious organizations throughout the history of the world, with a special focus upon the West Reaches. It reveals the connection of these seemingly disparate faiths to a singular organization, the Cult of Mammon, and highlights the Cult's complicity in using these faiths for the purposes of social engineering. The historical veracity of these claims is largely unknown, but presently under investigation. Although the content of the book is not in and of itself magical, the book has been afflicted with an unhallow curse, which causes it to exude a perpetual aura of blight and corruption. A cursory analysis of handwriting and writing styles reveals that the text has had a multitude of authors over the centuries, but the majority of these authors are unknown; from context, it can be inferred that the final unfinished pages of the tome were written by Fyodor himself. Content of the History The content of the Unhallowed History is divided into a number of epochs, each associated with a major religion from the history of the world. Much of the earliest content of the book is illegible due to fading and the fact that its grammatical patterns are alien to anyone who has yet attempted to provide a translation of the book. The most significant later entries (dated within the past 4800 years) are as follows. The Epoch of Krom In the period of warfare popularly known as the Sultan's War, an alliance of rulers under the banner of Xertaxos IV managed to annihilate the central seat of power of the Baldian Empire and broker surrender from its surviving imperial holdings. Unfortunately, upon fulfilling his agreement to distribute parcels of Baldia as new lordships for those who aided him in the war effort, Xertaxos IV found himself in a perilous situation where the vast geographical distance between the localized government of those lordships effectively reduced the power of the central ruler, Xertaxos IV himself. Fearing a reprisal, Xertaxos IV consulted the apparent author of this portion of the History, a Baldian advisor who was kept alive for his services in the transition of government, and learned that the Baldian leaders countered this problem through the development and maintenance of ideological state apparatuses that served to reinforce the status quo on the cultural level; moreover, these apparatuses, including the state religion, had been leveraged to maintain control over material conditions as well through processes such as mandatory tithing, the consumption of resources via ritual, and the establishment of a "divinely inspired" class system. Recognizing the sudden absence of a unifying religious force as the weak point of his new empire, Xertaxos IV, working with the unnamed author, appointed many of his most trusted allies high priests of a new religion founded upon the values of the state, thereby manufacturing the deity known as Krom. Worship of Krom proved an effective force for unifying the state; so effective that, during the reign of Xertaxos VII, the state itself was renamed the Empire of Krom. The spread of this empire was one of the most significant military and cultural achievements in history, eventually occupying some 80% of the continent south of the Great Bay. It would continue unabated until the eventual sundering of the empire into five sovereign states following the assassination of ruler Sysqum V by his inner circle and the ensuing War of the Nine-Headed Wyrm. The overwhelming implication of this section of the history is that a number of the inner circle of Baldian scholars and advisors who survived the Sultan's War were actually acolytes of the Cult of Mammon and saw the inexperience of Xertaxos IV as an opportunity to channel new power to their sleeping god. The Epoch of Sul Several centuries following the Epoch of Krom, the Five Kingdoms were subject to a dramatic political upheaval following ten consecutive seasons of blight and famine precipitated, in the view of the author at least, by the corruption of the Great Ygrates and its tributaries by the magico-industrial activities of Allo Krokius, Grand Vizier of Upper Nidesci. As a result of this political instability, various factions within the other four ruling kingdoms were able to find common ground with the anarchistic Order of the Harvest, worshipers of the fertility goddess Isizi, clandestinely providing them with the capital and resources required to instigate a years-long siege upon Gran Khul, the capital of Upper Nidesci, which culminated in the storming of Krokius' palace and the assassination of his entire family. Following this event and the subsequent restructuring of the Five Kingdoms during the well-documented Trials of Isizi, the Order of the Harvest managed to reform former Upper Nidesci into an unofficial union of cities held together by agrarian interests and common values known as New Isizu. Content to allow such a state to exist in order to support the establishment of an industrial hegemony in Lower Nidesci, the rulers of the restructured Four Kingdoms provided implicit support to this union for a period of time. Eventually, however, the cultural implications of the matriarchal rites and rituals surrounding the worship of Isizi presented a problem as the representatives of New Isizu attempted to instate an embargo on agrarian exports to the hyper-industrialized Lower Nidesci in retaliation for the establishment of what it saw as regressive social policies. Lower Nidesci was unable to simply wage war upon Isizu due to the latter's establishment of powerful trade relations with significant political forces in the Ostberg Valley Chain. Not content to display weakness before the other members of the restructured Kingdoms, however, it began to subtly exert, chiefly through the bribery of city administrators, an internal influence upon the united cities of Isizu through the establishment of a Church of Sul within many influential cities. Within a few generations, political and economic pressures had resulted in the patriarchal Order of Sul (a religion virtually identical in all respects to the Order of Isizi save for the gender of the deity) becoming the chief representative deity of the region, the democratic ousting of the few Isizi loyalists that remained, and eventually, a complete merging of the union with Lower Nidesci to form the present day state of Greater Nidesci. The author's implication in these passages again asserts the complicity of followers of Mammon in orchestrating this cultural shift through not only influencing the factions who supported the revolution of the Order of the Harvest, but also through the manipulation by way of blood magic of key representatives within Isizi, instigating its eventual downfall and transition. The Epoch of Wotan The establishment of the religion of Wotan some two thousand years ago was brought about by a resurgence of interest, on the part of humans, in Baldian culture due chiefly to the discovery of a massive body of Baldian philosophical works buried with Xertaxos IV upon his passing. Though Baldian political and ethical thought had always held some sway in the Empire of Krom and the subsequent Five Kingdoms, this discovery happened to coincide with the development of industrialized mass-printing technology, allowing for the first time the translation of these canonical works from Old Baldian to Common, and their introduction to the Ostberg Valley Chain. The religion of Wotan was instigated by Dismas, then Lord of Skyveil Keep and surrounding settlements, in response to the popularity of the stoic philosophy of the Baldian writer, Epecius. The figure of Wotan himself grew out of the ritual, which was established first as a way to generate revenue for the region through organized athletic competitions. The religious aspect was introduced at the recommendation of Dismas' younger brother, Balbus, as a way of establishing a stronger cultural identity for the often-marginalized Skyveil district, enabling it to exert further sway within localized political consortia. Within a hundred years, the religion was well-established, with a number of subsidiary temples throughout the West Reaches serving as outposts for recruiting impassioned youths into the faith. Unfortunately for these early acolytes of Wotan, the ascendance of their religion coincided with the Conquest of Humanity instigated by the Elves shortly before the founding of the Elder Consortium and the establishment of the Grand Alliance. Spurred on by their adherence to Wotanic ideology, most acolytes of Wotan refused to bend the knee to the elves, and consequently were harshly subjugated; this campaign of subjugation was swift and decisive, ending after just a few months with the destruction by elven wizards of Skyveil Keep and its young master Epecio, grandson of the founder Dismas. Following this tragic event, Skyveil was left without a central fortress, a military, or domestic allies, and consequently was too weak to maintain its position within the Ostberg Chain mountains. Consequently, interim regent Balbus IV had no choice but to yield to the forces of history and seek a position within the new social order. The author of the text, who insinuates himself to be among the elder members of the Elves who instigated the Conquest, notes that he was instrumental in brokering for the religion of Wotan to be incorporated into the narrative of the Grand Alliance as a way of culturally reinforcing the militaristic union of humans and Elves that made possible the expansion of roads that would eventually allow the Elder Consortium to settle and unify the Reaches. In this way, he implies, the culturally reinforced worship of the false god would not only further the aims of the Consortium but also feed yet more souls to the sleeping deity Mammon. The Epoch of Ahriman The text ends with a collection of disorganized notes from the hand of Fyodor the Fallen, insinuating that his masters in the Cult of Mammon have charged him with the task of subverting the worship of the deity Ahriman not only for the purpose of social unification, but also to establish the foundation for a plan by a faction of the Cult of Mammon secreted within the Elder Consortium to guide that institution towards the fulfillment of their own devilish agenda. He notes that he will soon be meeting the paladin of Ahriman himself, and is looking forward to testing his mettle.